Overview:
Coach Joe Pasternack is building next season’s team around his returning backcourt of Miro Little and C.J. Shaw
The NCAA transfer portal giveth, and the transfer portal taketh away.
It’s had an effect of biblical proportions this offseason for the UC Santa Barbara men’s basketball team.
Three of the Gauchos’ top players — Jason Fontenet II, Colin Smith and Zion Sensley — took the money and ran.
Their combined NIL (name, image and likeness) deals add up to more than $2 million.
Freshman guard Zachiah “Z.Z.” Clark also gave up his UCSB scholarship and transferred to William & Mary.
It was all coach Joe Pasternack could do to hold onto his starting backcourt of point guard Miro Little and wing guard C.J. Shaw.
“That was our No. 1 priority when the season ended,” he said.
Pasternack followed the advice of old friend Lawrence Frank, the president of basketball operations for the Los Angeles Clippers.
They both got their basketball education in the school of hard knocks at the University of Indiana from the late Bobby Knight, the Hoosiers’ heavy-handed head coach.
“Lawrence told me that you have to prioritize who your franchise players are,” Pasternack said.
“You kind of move through it like that in building an NBA roster, and that’s what we tried to do in organizing our roster.”
Pasternack identified Little, a 6-foot-4 senior-to-be, as the key to UCSB’s next season.
Shaw, a 6-5 sophomore, represents the Gauchos’ future.
The Gauchos, 18-14 overall last year, fell well short of their predicted runner-up finish in the Big West Conference race with a win-loss record of 11-9.
They were the No. 7 seed for the league tournament and were promptly ousted in the first round by No. 6 UC Davis.
But the sky fell for UCSB when the ballhawk Little went down with injuries.
An abdominal strain knocked him out of six early season games and a hand injury kept him out of eight league contests.
UCSB’s record without him was 3-5 in league and 5-9 overall.
“When Miro went down, we just didn’t have experience ready to go,” Pasternack said.
Shaw, a nimble 6-5 freshman, had to learn Little’s position on the fly. His 73 assists were offset by 58 turnovers.
He had an outstanding season otherwise, ranking second on the team in scoring (12.2 points per game), first in three-point percentage (.432), second in field-goal percentage for those averaging at least 10 minutes per game (.517) and second in free-throw percentage (.826) to earn All-Big West honorable mention.
Four other returning players are expected to play important roles next season: 6-10 graduate student Koat Keat Tong, 6-7 senior Marvin McGhee, 6-8 sophomore Mike Simcoe and 6-5 sophomore Luke Zuffelato, the former Santa Barbara High School star.
Pasternack has also gotten a good look at incoming freshman Jordan Charles, a 6-foot point guard from Bella Vista College Prep in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“He’s been working out with us all spring and has been a real pleasant surprise,” he said. “He does have to get stronger, but his quickness and speed are incredible.”
The Dearly Departed
Fontenet, a 6-6 junior guard, was one of the coaches’ picks for the Big West’s All-Preseason Team last year. A hip injury requiring surgery, however, ended his season after just five games.
They were his last as a Gaucho. He accepted an NIL offer from Rhode Island worth $700,000 last month.
Northwestern lured Smith away with an NIL deal of $750,000.
The 6-8 senior forward averaged 11.9 points on 40.5% shooting from three-point range and 4.2 rebounds during his junior season with the Gauchos.
Sensley accepted an NIL deal of $600,000 from Loyola Marymount. The 6-8 junior led UCSB in rebound average (7.6 per game) last year whole scoring at a 10.9-point clip on 36% shooting from three.
If he stays with the Lions for his last two seasons, he’ll face Shaw and several other former teammates when the Gauchos join the West Coast Conference in the 2027-2028 season.
Those are all big Nikes that UCSB must fill on offense. But defense was what cost the Gauchos the most last season.
They allowed a field-goal percentage of .460 to rank eighth out of 11 Big West schools.
They were also second worst in both blocked shots and steals.
It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out what zero rim protection and zero ball pressure add up to in today’s world of college basketball.
Zero postseason success.
Pasternack’s biggest goal in recruiting the transfer portal was adding players who could play both ends of the court.
“When you look at the Oklahoma City Thunder and their roster building, they get two-way players,” he said. “(Former Gaucho) Ajay Mitchell is one of their two-way players, and so is Jalen Williams.
“They can really shoot the ball, but they can really defend, too.
“In building our roster for next season, it’s really important for us to have that.”
Important Imports
Pasternack has more than covered his losses, replacing his four departees with six transfers.
He got his rim protector in sophomore-to-be Eric Dibami, a 6-10 and 240-pound center from Cameroon by way of Florida International University.
Dibami became the only player in that school’s history to make both the Conference USA All-Defense and All-Freshman teams last year. He blocked 1.4 shots per game while averaging 9.3 points and 7.4 rebounds.
“He had 10 offensive rebounds in his last game (at the CUSA tournament, tying FIU’s school record),” Pasternack pointed out. “I just visited with him and his size is really telling.
“I was thinking, ‘Wow, we haven’t had somebody like that.’”
Dibami’s father, Bertin Tomou Bayard, played professional soccer and most recently served as manager of Belgium’s Ans-Montegnée soccer club.
“His agent was Steph Swenson’s agent,” said Pasternack, referring to UCSB’s all-league, Belgian point guard from the 2024-2025 season. “Steph had a really good experience here and that helped convince Eric to come here, too.
“He could have gone to Miami or Florida or even (NCAA champion) Michigan as a backup, but he felt like he could do better here.
“He’s an incredibly high-character young man and he loves the game.”
Pasternack got an assist from his current point guard in recruiting Finland’s Viljami Vartiainen, a senior from Weber State.
The 6-6 wing guard will help replace the outside shooting lost in the departures of Smith and Sensley.
He led the Big Sky Conference with an average of 2.9 three-pointers per game last year (76-for-180, 42.2%) while averaging 12.8 points per game.
Vartiainen played with Little on Finland’s 18U National Team. He also did his Finnish military service with NBA All-Star Lauri Markkanen of the Utah Jazz.
“I recruited Lauri to Arizona a number of years ago, and Lauri helped us get both Viljami and Miro,” Pasternack said.
“Viljami is a big-time shooter, and he’s done it consistently throughout international and college play.
“And like with Miro, his mother was a basketball coach.”
UCSB struggled to stop dribble penetration last year, but it’s sought to plug that hole with R.J. Smith, a 6-3 graduate transfer from DePaul.
He set a school record for career steals at La Verne’s Damien High School, the 2022 CIF State Division 1 champion, and also ranks as its No. 3 all-time scorer.
Smith will be playing for his third college, having averaged 6.6 points and 2.4 assists at DePaul last year and 6.2 points and 1.7 assists as a sophomore at Colorado.
“R.J. is a two-way player who can really defend,” Pasternack said. “He started at Colorado, shot 38% from three, then started at DePaul.
“He shot just 31% from three last year but played with a broken finger.”
Forward Thinking
Other transfers to sign with UCSB are Antonio Chol, a 6-9 graduate student from New Mexico, and Declan Duro, a 6-8 sophomore from Texas.
Chol made 32 starts for the Lobos, averaging 7.7 points per game, to help them win 26 games and advance to the National Invitation Tournament Final Four. His 60 threes ranked second on the team.
He previously played for Rutgers and then Garden City Community College in Kansas, where he earned second-team All-America honors while averaging 19.5 points on 39.7% shooting from three.
His three-point percentage dropped to 32.3% last year at New Mexico.
“He took a lot of shots, and some real tough ones, and hopefully he’ll take better ones with us,” Pasternack said. “But I know he’s hungry and we’re really excited to have him.”
Duro played just 12 games as a freshman at Texas last year after the Longhorns beat out UCSB, Creighton and Saint Mary’s for his services.
“He’s 6-8 and 245 pounds — a real big, strong, athletic kid who can play the three, the four and the five,” Pasternack said. “My assistant, Brian Eskildsen, saw him playing overseas two years ago and really loved him.
“He’s from Germany and was one of the top players in Europe.”
Duro averaged 11.4 points, shooting 52.4%, and 5.1 rebounds for a German team that took second at the 2025 FIBA U-19 World Cup.
Another young German star, 6-11 incoming freshman Marco John Wuol, also announced on Facebook that he’s accepted an offer to play for UCSB.
He averaged 12.1 points, 6.2 rebounds and — most alluringly for UCSB — 3.0 blocks last year for International Basketball Academy Munich in Germany’s premier U-19 league.
Pasternack, whose Gauchos have been plagued by injuries the last three seasons, figures he’s got enough insurance with 13 quality scholarship players on next year’s roster.
“It became really important to us during this year’s recruiting class to have enough depth at every position no matter who goes down,” he said.
Or who’s already gone down into the transfer portal.
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